Crash triggers renewed action to save Black Grouse

Black Grouse (Peter Christian)

Once you’ve seen a Black Grouse lek, you never forget it. Arriving before sunrise at a field, moor or forest clearing, their soft bubbling calls hang in the mist, interspersed with fierce hisses. As daylight grows, smudged blobs materialise into male Black Grouse, sparring in a flat open area, trying to impress females crouched, out of our view, in surrounding rush. A ‘lek’ is a gathering that determines the alpha male who will mate with the majority of females. Black Grouse and Capercaillie are the only British breeding birds that lek, but species as diverse as Atlantic Cod, birds of paradise, and some bats, butterflies and moths have evolved this approach to sexual selection.

It's nearly 40 years since I saw my first Black Grouse lek, in Clocaenog Forest, and I still get a kick from the experience, now as part of a scheme that monitors birds at ‘focal leks’ in Northeast Wales. Numbers had been declining, but last year’s results were a shock: a 45% decline since the last full survey in 2019. Their range has contracted dramatically too, away from the south and west. Now almost all Welsh Black Grouse can be shown on a single Ordnance Survey map, either side of the Dee Valley and stretching into the Clwydian Hills.
The decline has spurred a new project from RSPB Cymru, which last week secured funding from the Welsh Government Nature Networks Fund. It will work with landowners and government agencies to manage farmland and woodland in key areas to benefit Black Grouse as part of a long-term sustainable management plan, that will include grazing patterns, peatland rewetting and managing predation by foxes and crows.

Black Grouse are easily disturbed at the lek, so if you know of a site, stay in your car throughout, and drive away only after the birds have dispersed. Always follow the Grouse-watching Code. In the same area, another threatened species to receive NNF funding is the Curlew, and potential volunteers are invited to a sign-up evening at Llandegla village hall tomorrow evening (12 March) - see the graphic below.

BTO Cymru will also receive money from the same fund to launch a Welsh Raptor Monitoring Scheme. Building on a project that has run in Scotland since 2002, it will improve monitoring of birds of prey on protected areas and should produce Welsh trends for widespread species such as Kestrel and Peregrine. Volunteers will be a crucial part of data collection, which should start in 2025. Subject to funding, longer-term goals include monitoring productivity and developing population trends for scarcer species.
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The first migrant Chiffchaffs arrived at the weekend, with singing birds across the region. I watched a dozen in a copse near Llanfairfechan on Saturday, focused more on feeding than announcing their arrival. Sand Martins were at RSPB Conwy and RSPB Burton Mere Wetlands, and doubtless more will arrive this week on southerly winds. Greenland White-fronted Geese remain in the Cefni Valley, Surf and Velvet Scoters off Llanddulas, and two dozen Waxwings were on Halkyn Mountain at the weekend, but a flock at Garden City has moved on. A Black-necked Grebe joined four Slavonian Grebes in Anglesey’s Beddmanarch Bay.